Oracle Simphony POS Systems vs. WooCommerce

In my experience, there has not been a resolution on outstanding tickets opened two years ago during the initial implementation. Simple things like time reporting, creating buttons, and marking items as "unavailable" have issues. The system has a lag when servers log out of checks that prevents them from opening the checks on another terminal without a wait that feels like an eternity in the restaurant industry and with direct impact to the guest. Good luck calling support. Most of my experience involves the person I spoke with having no idea how to fix my issue and having to "escalate the ticket." This escalation process will last weeks, months, and in our case, years with no resolution.

WooCommerce is best suited to customers whose website is built on the WordPress platform, and whose development team has a good understanding of plug-in implementation. If your website is not built on WordPress, but on Laravel or React (or any other non WordPress technology), then WooCommerce is not for you. WooCommerce is also great for customers who just need a simple online shopping experience. If your needs involve more complex or immersive features such as timed discounts, pick up locations, delivery reminders, or post shopping feedback surveys, know that you will need to purchase additional add-ons to make to get these features using WooCommerce set up on WordPress.

Incentivized

• Real time sales
• Real time labor costs
• Integration with account software

Incentivized

• Free base package means I can use it when I need to and not pay for it when I'm not using it
• I can customize the e-commerce options and integrate the calendar booking
• Payment processing is quick and easy and I can choose my provider

Incentivized

• Support is awful. Oracle does not directly support end-users and depends on resellers to offer support. So if there is a bug or breaking change, we have to jump through hoops to get something fixed.
• Does not play well with other software or interfaces. There are interfaces but they lack a serious amount of features that are crucial to our business.
• The guest facing hardware does not hold up to constant use very well.
• The backend hardware is lacking in PCI compliance and is not meant for enterprise use.
• The software itself looks as if it is stuck in the early 2000s and there has been no sign of an update in many years.
• Reporting is difficult to set up and use and you have to rely on third-party reporting to get decent usable reports.

Incentivized

• Because of how the Wordpress database is structured, WooCommerce isn't great for large or complex e-commerce sites.
• More out-of-the-box options would be nice within the base software.
• Because add-on plugins are developed by 3rd parties, sometimes you get conflicts that break things.

Incentivized

Despite very rare glitches, more connected to an excessive number of plugins, that affect the speed of the site, we are extremely satisfied with the platform, the ability to import and export products, even though we just export them, as we have our proprietary system for updating inventories. We love the ease of upgrading, enhancing, innovating, and the freedom we have to do whatever we want, which is a plus, when you consider Shopify can take down your whole store as they please, if they think you aren't abiding to their TOS or their ever changing set of rules.

Incentivized

It is built on the Wordpress platform, so there are some quirks compared to a dedicated e-commerce product, but it is very intuitive and easy to use, especially for anyone with Wordpress experience. There are numerous great support articles and learning resources available. Significant customization can be achieved with plugins vs other eCommerce platforms, which may require more custom code and have fewer plugin options.

Incentivized

not muh support

We've stayed with MICROS mainly due to that's how we've always operated and to switch operating POS systems would be a HUGE learning curve for everyone involved.

Incentivized

We were pretty sure we wanted a WordPress site so that we had more control over the site itself, having been burned by third-party vendor sites before. The fact that WooCommerce integrates so well with WordPress was a big selling point for us. Magento would have been too heavy of a lift for our small dev team and we didn't want to rely on Shopify or BigCommerce (though all of those products could have their merits for other projects or clients).

Incentivized

• Micros has allowed us to leverage our margin by using our own credit processor and loyalty program. We've seen success from both of these platforms (not Micros) and have been able to save money on the extra costs of using Micros.

Incentivized

• Positive: low cost to start up, and allowed us to start selling right away.
• Negative: better plug-ins have a high cost of entry. For example if you want to do subscriptions you need a paid plugin for it.
• Positive: easily integrates with PayPal and Stripe.

Incentivized